A Disappointed Man
by Sophprosyne
Summary: A simple slip-up by Dumbledore changes the future of the wizarding world. Dumbledore isn't killed by Snape. Instead he trains Harry, guides him to become the leader and warrior he should have been. Harry becomes a general, leading his forces against Voldemort while navigating the political realm and twisting Ministry policy to his own benefit.


**AN: This is a longer work that I'm attempting. I have ideas on where I want to take it, but no definitive path as of yet. A warning and a promise though. This story will be darker than canon, because the entire premise is that Harry is being groomed to take Dumbledore's position and lead the war against Voldemort. There will not be any camping in forests; just two generals leading their forces against one another for control over the British Isles. Harry won't be a remorseless or charismatic leader out of the gates though. He has to diverge from canon Harry first. That could take some time. Expect mistakes, character deaths and the inevitable consequences of a country-wide civil war.**

**A Disappointed Man**

**Chapter 1.**

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him. –G.K. Chesterton

Harry had been forced to learn that even the greatest of men make mistakes at a very young age. Even Dumbledore had failed in the past. So, he was more prepared than most when the charm paralyzing his body failed. Harry focused on moving his arm slowly, to draw his wand in case the situation turned for the worse and spells were fired. He could vaguely make out Dumbledore pleading with Malfoy, and the other Death Eaters egging Malfoy on, urging him to finish off Dumbledore.

Snape stepped forward. A hush descended over the group of Death Eaters and Harry gripped the wand tighter. "Severus… please," Dumbledore implored. Snape's countenance turned steely and he raised his wand in the air.

"_Avada Ke-," _he started.

"No!" Harry yelled, standing up, his invisibility cloak slipping off of him. Snape's concentration was broken as he looked over and saw Harry. His eyes widened. With a primeval roar that only an orphan could summon he slashed his wand horizontally in front of his chest and unleashed a silent wave of deadly azure flame that roared over the Death Eaters. Most of them went down, burning and screaming out in agony. Harry kept moving, leaving his cloak laying on the ground behind him. Bellatrix and Snape were still up, having been able to parry the flames he had procured.

Harry sent another rush of flames toward them as he ran over to Dumbledore. He sensed a burst of magic from behind him and segued perfectly into a roll, the blasting curse spiraling harmlessly over his head. Harry came out of his roll right next to Dumbledore and surveyed his options critically. Bellatrix and Snape were slowly advancing on him and they stood between him and the door. He knew that there was no way he would be able to defeat the more experienced pair. A few other Death Eaters were recovering from their positions on the ground, staggering to their feet, scarred and dazed from the burns he had inflicted upon them.

The only way out was behind him. Dumbledore was slouching on the ground, barely cognizant, and would clearly be of no aid. Harry quickly waved his wand in a flourishing motion, conjuring a shimmering blue shield in front of him, but he knew it wouldn't last for long with the beating it was tacking from Bellatrix and Snape sending spells at it. Harry noted that Snape seemed to be hesitating slightly, sending spells much less frequently than Bellatrix, but he had no time to ponder why that might be.

Harry accioed a broom and caught it deftly in his hand mounting himself on it before grabbing Dumbledore and doing the same. The shield came crashing down them in a scintillating flash of red curses meeting the blue shield and a barrage of nasty looking hexes and jinxes came flashing through. Harry off the ground with the broom but grunted as his right arm was hit by an orange, pulsating spell that began to burn as they lifted off into the sky.

Harry's flying skills were put to the test as he tried to manage his increasingly burning arm, the torpid form of Dumbledore nearly falling off in the back, and the overall aged nature of Rosmerta's broom. Harry nearly thought that he was in the clear, until a spell blindsided him, blasting the broom beneath him into shards that painfully impacted his body. There was a moment of upward movement caused by inertia, before gravity sent Harry and Dumbledore careening towards the ground.

Desperately, Harry latched on to Dumbledore and started casting spells in rapid succession. Featherlight charms on them, cushioning charms on the ground and a gust of wind blew from the tip of his wand to the ground, slightly slowing their descent. Then they hit the ground.

Despite the layers of charms Harry had cast to help slow their descent and weaken the force of impact, there was still enough force behind the fall that he could feel and hear bones crunching as he hit the ground. Pain settled in, immobilizing him. In the distance, he could hear the racket of battle, but it seemed so far away now, so distant.

Lethargy sunk in; lethargy that Harry knew he would have to shake off if he wanted to survive. He began to slowly push himself into a position that he could stand up from, every small movement eliciting a shockwave of pain in his body and a hiss of discomfort from his mouth.

Agonizing minutes passed before Harry was able to push himself up from his supine position on the ground. It was fortuitous that he did so, because the battle had left the confines of the castle and the combatants were spilling out onto the grounds. To Harry, it looked like the Order was pushing back the outnumbered Death Eaters with the help of some of the older Hogwarts students that had no doubt been awakened by the battle.

Harry gave a silent cheer in his head, pleased that this would turn out to be a victory, until he realized that if the Death Eaters kept moving in this general direction, they would encounter Dumbledore and him. Neither of them were in fighting condition exactly. Harry doubted that he would even be able to move Dumbledore, who was clearly unconscious and loosing blood (not to mention his mind as well), to avoid the Death Eaters.

"_Expecto Patronum_," Harry muttered. A feeling of complacency and warmth washed over him as Prongs erupted from his wand and pranced around him. The sound of the battle was drawing nearer. "Find help," Harry implored the stag, before dropping to his knees, so severe was the pain he was in.

Prongs gave what almost amounted to a nod before bounding off toward the approaching battle. Death Eaters and members of the Order alike were distracted by the appearance of Harry's iconic patronus, and it lent heart to the defenders of Hogwarts. They pushed forward against the Death Eaters with renewed vigor, their lines coalescing, spells coming in waves, offense perfectly coordinated with defense so there was never a hole in their defenses. The chaos that the battle had been earlier slowly gave way to an organized rout of the Death Eaters by the defenders.

Unfortunately for Harry, the way the Death Eaters were retreating was toward him. His position on the ground with Dumbledore was blocking the most expedient path the Death Eaters had to their escape route. Stags broke through the front lines of the defenders, searching for a face familiar to Harry. It found Remus and Tonks, fighting side by side, one on the defense and one on the offense. The two looked at Prongs and Remus gave a wry smile. A smile that was wiped off his face completely when he heard the message Prongs had for him. The patronus played the only message it had been given. "Find help." Harry's voice, desperate and pleading came out of the patronus.

"Lead us to him Prongs," Remus demanded, his voice cold. Determined. Prongs leapt through the rows of Hogwarts defenders standing in the middle of the ground between the Death Eaters and the defenders. Knowing that it would be suicidal to try to go the way Prongs was, Remus disillusioned himself, Tonks swiftly following suit. They moved steadily to the side of the battle, trying to go around the defenders and attackers without being struck. It was slow going, too slow. Prongs began getting agitated as the Death Eaters drew closer and closer to Dumbledore and Harry. Prongs retreated to where the two of them lay, the light from the patronus illuminating the two wizards on the ground.

Remus and Tonks quickly saw the danger the retreating Death Eaters presented. "We have to move faster," Tonks told Remus, not with fear or desperation, but a harsh willingness to do what would be required of her. Remus nodded.

"We have to move quickly. Our disillusionment charm will fail a few seconds after we start running, so we have to get over to where Harry and Dumbledore are before the Death Eaters see us. Then we can grab them and get out of there."

The two broke into a full-out run. Their disillusionment charms were fading away, leaving patches of their bodies exposed. The darkness of their robes helped to keep them hidden from the sight of the Death Eaters, and they reached Harry and Dumbledore just as their disillusionment charms failed completely. "We need to get them out of here," Tonks whispered. "They may have lost too much blood already." Because of how close Dumbledore and Harry were together, their blood had begun to mix and congeal in a puddle between the two of them. It was quite the gory scene, and only experience with war kept Tonks and Remus focused on the task at hand.

"If we try to move them, their wounds may just be exacerbated," Remus pointed out. Tonks looked frustrated, running her hand through her black hair, having switched the color because of how noticeable bubblegum pink would have been.

"We don't have a choice." Tonks punctuated the finality of her words by picking Harry up and slinging him over her shoulder. Remus did the same with Dumbledore. The Death Eaters were less than 20 yards away now, their forms easily visible. Remus could smell the sweat, fear and blood on their bodies. Their ranks had dwindled as the Order chipped away at their numbers with a variety of non-lethal spells, leaving them bound or disabled behind them as they advanced.

The Death Eaters were too close not to notice the two Order members at this point. A few Death Eaters had turned their backs on the Order members firing on them to face Tonks and Remus. The Death Eaters began to level their wands and Remus jabbed his wand in the air, unleashing a volley of bright red sparks in the air, the universal sign of a wizard in need.

Spells began to arc toward Tonks and Remus, whizzing dangerously close to their bodies. They set Dumbledore and Harry on the ground, unable to defend themselves efficiently while holding them, and conjured a shimmering silvery shield in front of the pair, to defend them from any stray spells.

Tonks and Remus faced the approaching Death Eaters. They ignored defense for the time being, trusting that they would be able to dodge any spells that came close enough to hit them. Since there were only a few Death Eaters actually able to defend themselves, a number of them fell to the ground, thoroughly hexed into oblivion, unable to defend themselves from the Order members in front and in back of them. Seeing their numbers dwindle even farther, the Death Eaters did the only thing they could.

They turned their backs on the Order members in front of them and rushed Tonks and Remus. A volley of curses lanced at the two Order members, too many to block all of them. Remus fell to the ground, a gaping hole in his chest. Tonks got hit by a blasting curse to the leg, and crumbled to the ground. One of her legs and part of her torso was missing. She raised her wand one last time and a wall of fire was brought into existence between the fallen Order members and the approaching Death Eaters.

Tonks lapsed into unconsciousness, joining Dumbledore and Harry. Remus bled out slowly. The Death Eaters were able to make it to the edge of the grounds and apparate away. The flames died away, revealing the carnage to the order members. Remus lay on the ground, his eyes glassed over, dead from the gouging curse that had ripped his chest open and blown part of it away. Tonks was missing parts of her body and lay on the ground, ashen faced from blood loss. Dumbledore and Harry were bleeding from numerous small wounds and bones were protruding from their bodies at awkward angles, having torn through the skin.

The Order members quickly gathered up their fallen comrades and levitated them to Hogwarts.

O—O—O—O

Harry awoke in a familiar location. The sterile, white-bleached hospital wing. Harry reached over and put his wand into the pocket of the infirmary gown, not liking when he didn't have it one his person. The scene in the hospital wing was different from how it was normally. The spacious room was packed to the brim with people, healers obviously from St. Mungo's rushing from bed to bed, waving their wands over the wounded inhabitants of said beds and forcing foul looking potions down their throats. There was one corner of the room that had curtains pulled around it, precluding anyone from viewing what was going on inside. It was from there the Madam Pomfrey emerged, face drawn and pinched with bags under her eyes.

She surveyed the barely controlled chaos before noticing that Harry was awake. She bustled over to him, barely giving him an encouraging nod before waving her wand over him and muttering incantations. Satisfied with the results, stopped and gave him a long, pitying stare. It made him uncomfortable, to say the least. "What happened?" Harry asked, as much out of curiosity as to stop her from staring at him.

"The Order drove off those horrible Death Eaters with the help of some of the older students. Honestly, letting children fight. I never thought I'd see the day…" Pomfrey started.

"Where's Dumbledore?" Harry asked. "Is he alright?"

It was Pomfrey's turn to look uncomfortable. "I suppose it would be easier to show you," she said hesitantly. She gestured for Harry to get up and follow her. He did so, noticing that his body wasn't in as bad a shape as he would have thought after the beating he had taken.

"You've been out for two days," Pomfrey said, having seen the ways his eyes roamed over his wounds. "The healers from St. Mungo's and I were able to treat the worst of your wounds, but the rest will have to heal on their own. There's only so much of these potions we can give you without adverse side effects."

Harry nodded, not particularly interested. He wasn't in much pain, and that was the only important thing. He followed Pomfrey down to the great hall, wondering why Dumbledore would be there. Half-a-dozen aurors stood guard outside the doors to the great hall. They waved the two of them in when they recognized Pomfrey and Harry.

The room had changed enough that Harry almost didn't recognize it. The tables, platforms and banners had all been taken down, the windows covered by thick planks of wood, candles and chandeliers removed. The only light came from incandescent balls floating around the ceiling.

Then he saw Dumbledore. The man was floating inside of a shimmering golden box, made entirely of magic. Harry could feel the power of it from where he was standing. It thrummed and hissed with energy.

"What is this?" Harry asked, half with horror, the other half with awe.

"The wound on the Headmaster's hand, those strange burns. When we started to treat him for his other wounds we noticed that it was spreading, spreading far faster than any curse we had seen before. We tried everything we knew to stop it, but we weren't able to. The only solution we had was to put him in this containment box. It places him in a controlled environment. The curse won't spread in there, but, well, we can't fix him either. The box only lasts for so long. You should talk to him, he's been asking for you." She gestured for him to go up to the containment box. Harry did so.

Harry was standing in front of the thrumming box when Dumbledore's eyes shot open. Startled, Harry took a step back, his hand reflexively going for his wand.

For once, Dumbledore looked neither amused nor light-hearted. His beard sagged, the wrinkles on his face seemed deeper and his eyes had no twinkle in them. He was still wearing the robes from the assault on Hogwarts. They were torn, bloodstained and singed from flames. Dumbledore didn't look like he had fully recovered from the battle either. His wounds were still there and he flinched as he moved to look at Harry directly.

For a moment, Dumbledore said nothing, merely stared at Harry, as if seeing him for the first time. Then, he spoke. "You should have let me die."

Shock washed over Harry. "What do you mean, let you die. You can't die. You're Dumbledore? Without you, Voldemort would be ruling Britain by now."

"Regardless," Dumbledore said, waving his blackened hand in a dismissive gesture. "I'm going to die soon. And it will be much less pleasant than the killing curse would have been."

"Snape…" Harry fumed. "I warned you didn't I. I told you that he was a traitor! He's a no good backstabbing git, who deserves to rot in Azkaban for what he's done."

Dumbledore looked vaguely disconcerted by the venom in Harry's voice. "Professor Snape is not a traitor Harry." Harry looked about to explode so Dumbledore cut him off. "Let me explain. I told him to kill me. He is still a spy for the Order." Again, Harry looked as if he were about to interrupt, but Dumbledore silenced him with an uncommonly stern look. "This hand," he said, gesturing with his good arm to the blackened one, "has been cursed so thoroughly that it was only with the help of Professor Snape's prodigious potions abilities and my, excuse my lack of humility, rather potent magic, that we were able to contain it. The damage that potion I drank in the cave did to me was two-fold. It both diluted the effects of Professor Snape's potion and weakened my magical and mental capabilities. As a result of that, I was going to die. I knew going in to that cave that I wouldn't likely come out, and, on the off chance that I did, I asked Professor Snape to release an old man from his suffering, so as not to make young Mr. Malfoy a murderer. There is still hope of redemption for him," Dumbledore mused.

The information was almost too much for Harry to take in. "But now that we're safe, we can just brew the potion that Professor Snape made for you and the curse won't progress any farther." Dumbledore was shaking his head before Harry even finished.

"I'm afraid that wouldn't be enough. In my weakened state, the curse would overtake me, no matter the potion I take. I'm not strong enough to hold it off, and no witch or wizard is powerful enough to release me from this curse. No… I am going to die," he said offhandedly. "Perhaps I will die later than I had originally intended; but it is unavoidable."

"What am I supposed to do now?" Harry asked. He could feel tears starting to well up and looked away from the man who had been his mentor.

"Why, Harry," Dumbledore said, a light-hearted smile on his face. "You're going to do exactly what you would have done before, except now, you have two things that you wouldn't otherwise have."

"What?" Harry asked.

"You will have my training… and my wand."

O—O—O—O

Harry moved the wand with vigor and precision, launching into a chain of curses, the formation coming faster and faster with every spell, the syllables and movements segueing perfectly into the next. His spells splashed harmlessly against the spell-resistant wall of the great hall and next to him, Dumbledore nodded with approval.

"Remember, variety is the key to a duel. No master duelist has ever been content to just mindlessly fling hex after hex. No… they take their opponents measure, distract them, use transfiguration, manipulate the environment or any of thousands of measure available to them. A specialized duelist can prevail easily in certain situations, but will eventually fail when confronted with a scenario beyond them. If you learn how to competently deal with changing situations, then with some basic training and the help of the Elder Wand, you will succeed in your mission." Dumbledore finished his mini-monologue just as Harry finished another, more varied, chain of spells.

"Why didn't you train me this way before, or tell me that you were the master of the most powerful wand in existence? That could have helped me on the quest you were going to send me on." Dumbledore was nodding as Harry finished, a thoughtful expression on his face.

"That is certainly a valid question," Dumbledore conceded. "And I suppose the answer is simply that you wouldn't have needed it. You have shown a spectacular ability to think on your feet," he elaborated, "and the original plan I had didn't require you to put yourself into any situations that would call for elaborate dueling measures. However, with my survival, and the fact that Tom will have undoubtedly heard about my injured hand from one of his spies, he would immediately recognize it as the curse he had designed to protect one of his horcruxes. He won't be content to just leave them in defensible positions now. If I know Tom, he'll be jealously guarding them himself. Instead of going on a mission to find and destroy his horcruxes, now we have a reasonable idea of where they are, but they are being defended by Voldemort. Not an ideal situation," Dumbledore concluded, stroking his beard.

"How are we going to storm the base of one of the most powerful wizards alive and destroy his incredibly powerful dark artifacts without getting ourselves killed?" Harry asked. It was a rhetorical question, for Dumbledore had no answers forthcoming. Harry hadn't expected him to.

"In the meantime," Dumbledore said. "We will have to prevent the Ministry from being overthrown. This has turned from a war in which one man can tip the balance, into a war of strategy and attrition. There are allies in the Ministry that we cannot afford to lose. Not if we wish to succeed."

"Should the Order assemble here?"

"No," Dumbledore said. "I have little doubt that Tom will have infiltrated our ranks, though not as severely as the Ministry's. Gather those closest to you, only the most trustworthy, and arrange a meeting with the minister. Tom will not attempt to overthrow the Ministry not by force, not at first. He knows that it is not an effective method from our last war. Instead, the minister will likely be assassinated and replaced by someone close to him, who is under the thrall of Tom."

Harry nodded. "Scrimgeour has wanted to meet with me for some time now. It shouldn't be challenging to get a meeting with him. I'll take Ron and Hermione with me."

Dumbledore adopted a slightly pained expression. "Harry, as loyal as those two are, they are not experienced fighters. Should you encounter difficulty, they can only be of so much assistance before they are in need of aid as well."

"Are you suggesting I leave them?"

"I'm suggesting you take others with you as well. Get to know some of the older, more experienced members of the order as well."

"But you said that not everyone in the Order can be trusted," Harry countered.

"True," Dumbledore conceded. "But I doubt very much that Voldemort has been able to pierce our higher levels. We train our operatives to resists the imperious curse. There is little chance that he has been able to put any of our more skilled people under his control. And even less of a chance that he has been able to convince them to join him."

"Who do you suggest I take?"

"Emmeline Vance. Kingsley will already be at the Ministry and provide assistance should you encounter any trouble. I'm afraid that after the death of Remus and Tonks' unfortunate crippling, the number of fighters in our Order is somewhat compromised. But that is a problem for another day."

At the mention of Remus and Tonks, Harry felt a pang of guilt run through his chest. It was his fault, however indirectly, that they had died. If he had been able to just move a couple of yards to the side, there wouldn't have been a problem. Maybe a month ago, before the Battle of Hogwarts, as people had taken to calling it, he would have spent more time thinking about it. But his training had hardened him, mentally as well as physically. He knew that he couldn't afford to spend time thinking about such things. Dumbledore may have never explicitly said it, but this training, giving him his wand; it could only mean that Dumbledore was grooming Harry to take over his position as leader of the Order. He didn't have the experience in battle, or quite the level of training to do so yet, but that would come with time. Unfortunately.

Harry gave the perfunctory goodbye to Dumbledore and made his way from the entrance hall up to the hospital wing. He needed to talk to Pomfrey. She had told him that the containment box wouldn't last for long, that Dumbledore had a very short time to live. Dumbledore had already spent a month training Harry, and every time Harry tried to find out from him how much longer the containment box was going to last, he got evasive. That could only mean a couple of things, few of them good.

He found her in her small office, hovering over a capacious copper cauldron. With Snape gone and no suitable replacement found, it fell to Madam Pomfrey to supply the hospital wing with all of its various potions. The strain of those added duties onto her already busy schedule was clearly straining her. Harry thought she looked like she hadn't slept for days she was so haggard. But he couldn't concern himself with that now.

"Madam Pomfrey," he began. "You told me that Dumbledore's containment box," his tongue rolled heavily over those words. It had always seemed very undignified to call something that was keeping the greatest wizard in the world alive from a deadly curse a box. A more aggrandizing name would fit nicely. Again though, nothing to be concerned with now. He had to focus on one goal at a time.

His voice had trailed off. Pomfrey was still looking at him expectantly. "His containment box wouldn't last very long." She nodded at that. "It's been a month," Harry said. "How much longer can it last?"

She gave a heavy sigh at that. "It's almost impossible to say without taking into account the abilities of every single person who helped to make it. And considering I don't know everyone who helped to make it because of how rushed we were at that time, I can't even get a rough estimate of how much longer the box will last. It could be anywhere from another couple of days, to a year. I'm sorry I can't be much more precise than that."

"But is there anything else that can help him," Harry pressed on stubbornly. "Fawkes healed me from basilisk venom. Why can't he just get rid of Dumbledore's curse?"

"From what little I know about phoenixes, they have the ability to fight against almost any type of wound. However," Pomfrey added, seeing a glint of hope in Harry's eyes. "Because of the power of this curse and how it's entwined with Dumbledore's body at this point, there just isn't any way for Fawkes to burn away the curse without burning away Dumbledore too. After all, that's how phoenixes heal. By burning away the wound. This wound has intertwined itself with the headmaster enough that Fawkes would only hurt him if he tried to heal him."

"So there's nothing we can do then," Harry said, summing up Pomfrey's unspoken attitude.

"I'm very sorry, Harry," she said, resting her arm on his shoulder for a moment. He just shook his head for a moment. Then left the room.

He wandered through the abandoned halls of Hogwarts, aimless, trying to get a grip on his thoughts. Dumbledore had been telling Harry that he was going to die for a month now, but Harry had never really believed that it was going to happen. This was Dumbledore, the man who had dueled two Dark Lords, worked with Nicholas Flamel and done things with magic that most witches and wizards could only dream of. If he could die, then what hope did the rest of them have.

Tears began to fall again. At the unfairness of it all. Because Tonks and Remus had died, his parents had died, Dumbledore was dying and he and his friends were in danger of dying. He cried for the people who had lost their lives and those who were going to lose their lives. Harry cried over the injustice of fighting a war that his generation had nothing to do with. And then he stopped crying. His tears stopped falling because if he let himself go any farther, he just knew, he would give up. And there were too many people counting on him for him to just surrender.

In his head, Harry composed a list of the things he needed to do.

Meet with Scrimgeour and bring him around to the plan Harry and Dumbledore had devised to save the Ministry.

Find someone willing to train Hogwarts students in dueling.

Recruit more members for the Order, which was at an all-time low for members.

Find a way to save Dumbledore, if it was possible.

Certainly that was the bare minimum of what he needed to get done within the next couple of weeks. Voldemort had been laying low since the Battle of Hogwarts but Harry knew he would poke his head out in a couple of weeks. He wouldn't be able to help himself. Voldemort's reputation was built entirely on fear. If he took a loss like the Battle of Hogwarts had undoubtedly been for him, and did nothing for months afterwards, he would start to lose support among the Moderates, who hadn't decided whether to support him or not. The hardliners would always be for him, but Harry knew that if the Order and the Ministry won enough battles, public opinion would swing in their favor.

You needed money, men and public support to wage a war. If any of those things started to seriously flag, then that side would be in trouble. Harry wouldn't be able to find the men supporting Voldemort; they were hidden too well. What he would be able to do, would be to leverage the power of the Ministry on places like Gringotts and the stores in Diagon Alley. If they had trouble fueling their war effort, they would be that much less effective. He could cut off the flow of money.

And once he did that, Voldemort would lash out, try to win a few battles to gain support from the sympathizers that would financially back him. If Harry could defeat him there, he would have effectively crushed both Voldemort's source of money and the morale of those supporting him. After that, it would be a simple matter of finding Voldemort's base and crushing Voldemort's forces with superior numbers.

That was the plan anyway. But, as Harry had learned in his time, no plan survived first contact with the enemy.

**AN: So there you can see the starting base of this story. It will be sporadically updated, perhaps months between updates, but I have no intention of abandoning it. I hope you can already see how Harry is splitting off from his old self. There was his little breakdown and then he calmly listed off what his plans were for the future. He'll be moving along with the specific goals in mind, influencing ministry policy and butting heads with people in the political area ahead. Harry's still a bit of a lone operative now, but as he becomes more respected in his own right as a warrior and leader, people will flock to him. Dumbledore is still guiding him now though, for as long as he survives. **


End file.
